Debtors Anonymous Tool of Service: Why we don't want to use it

Service is vital to our recovery. Only through service can we give to others 

what so generously has been given to us.  —Debtors Anonymous Tool 11

From what I have been told, members of Alcoholics Anonymous are big on service. From the moment they start working with a sponsor, the newly sober are guided toward doing service for their groups. I think this is because A.A.s understand that service is the antidote to selfishness. More than that, doing service for the newcomer who walks in the door is the path to continued sobriety. In other words, service is about survival.

In Debtors Anonymous, in my experience, we don't tend to see it that way. From my admittedly limited and self-focused vantage point of twenty-four years in the program, I observe that we D.A.s would pretty much prefer to do anything but service. Unless doing service has some kind of extrinsic payoff (e.g., the ego boost we can get from doing pressure relief meetings for the hapless newcomer), we would rather focus on our own needs and wants.

I think I understand why this is.

The essence of the disease of compulsive debting is a desire to get something for nothing. I want what I want, when and how I want it, and furthermore, I don't want to work for it, earn it, or pay for it. I have this mentality that I am entitled to receive my heart's desires simply because I exist. From that perspective, doing service is anathema to my belief that the world was created to serve me.

The flipside of this sense of entitlement—the belief that I deserve everything—is a misguided belief that I deserve nothing. This contorted manifestation of the disease tells me I am so unique and special that I should not be allowed to exist, let alone have my needs met. From this perspective, my life is so parched and deprived, I couldn't possibly scrape up enough heart, energy, or willingness to give away what I haven't got.

The common thread in both these manifestations of the compulsive debting disease is self-centeredness. Like most addicts, D.A.s are self-obsessed.

The Debtors Anonymous program, like other Twelve Steps programs, emerged from the founding program of Alcoholics Anonymous. We have "borrowed" many aspects of the A.A. program (sometimes without permission, imagine that). One of the principles we have ostensibly adopted is the idea of doing service to help us stay solvent. However, with debtors, doing service goes directly against our compulsion to debt.

Even though I might not be actively debting—that is, even though I might have cut up my credit cards, cancelled my credit lines, stopped borrowing from family and friends, and refrained from writing bad checks or paying bills late—I still have an underlying belief that I am special, unique, and exempt. Because my worldview is based on a sense of impoverishment, my first thought is always What can I get. My first thought is never What can I give. My belief systems encompasses only two ideas: I'm not enough, and there's not enough out there in the world for me. You can see how that worldview could limit my willingness to give.

Somewhere early in my D.A. program, I was fortunate to connect with some people who believed service was a practical antidote to our debting problem. Even when I had a hard time connecting with a higher power, I learned that the surest way to stop my self-obsession was to help someone else. Over the years, I have performed service at every level in D.A., from sponsorship to world service.

Service is vital to our recovery. I have taken that assertion to heart. I hope I never feel compelled to incur unsecured debt again. It's a one-day-at-a time reprieve that depends entirely on my spiritual fitness.

However, beyond my own recovery, having trusted servants willing to do service is vital to the survival of the Debtors Anonymous program. Without the willing hearts and hands to do the thankless chores of setting up meetings, ordering literature, managing the group's money, sponsoring newcomers, and taking care of the myriad other tasks that keep the doors open for the next still-suffering debtor, D.A. will wither. Recovery does not happen without service. D.A. will not survive without willing hands. If D.A. dies, debtors around the world run the risk of losing their hard-won solvency.

For many years, a handful of people from around the local D.A. area met regularly to perform the service work needed to maintain our area's website and PO box, support our public outreach efforts, manage a bank account, and collect and contribute funds to help local group representatives attend the annual service conference. In the past year, the number of people willing to do service dwindled until the same few people were rotating the essential tasks among themselves. Eventually we realized two people alone could not sustain our intergroup: rotation of leadership is a spiritual principle.

Thus, our local D.A. intergroup disbanded for lack of members willing to do service. We are in the process of distributing our funds and closing our bank account. Unless new trusted servants appear, the website will go dark in just over a year. Unless groups are willing to organize workshops, workshops will cease.

Lack of willingness to do service puts us all at risk. We stand to lose our solvency without the support of a strong D.A. program. However, the ones who really suffer could be the newcomers who have yet to find their way to a D.A. group or workshop. Who have we condemned to the misery of continued debting because we felt we had nothing to give or that D.A. belonged only to us?

You might be saying, Gosh, for someone named Hope, you sure have a gloomy view. I admit, part of my disease compels me to see only lack and not possibility. When I step out of my self-obsession for a moment, I remember the higher power decides outcomes. I can generate faith that those who want D.A. will somehow find D.A. as long as it is there to be found. No matter where they are, I intend to do my part to carry the D.A. message.

Our responsibility statement says "I pledge to extend my hand and offer the hope of recovery to anyone who reaches out to Debtors Anonymous."

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"Hope Newlyfound" is an alias for an anonymous member of the program of Debtors Anonymous free since 1995 from incurring unsecured debt (no credit cards, credit lines, bouncing checks, paying bills late, or borrowing from friends and family.)

Information about D.A. can be found at the Debtors Anonymous world service website, and locally in the Pacific Northwest at the Oregon intergroup website and the Seattle/Puget sound intergroup website.